Jamie Condliffe

Sony and Panasonic have just signed a deal to form a partnership which will see them jointly developing large, low-cost, high-resolution OLED panels for TVs.

Both Japanese companies have been struggling to make a profit on their TV sales recently, so they've joined forces in order to develop new printing-based OLED manufacturing techniques. While the screens themselves will be developed jointly, the resulting TVs will continue to be sold as separate brands.

The new manufacturing technique should cheapen the OLED production process, which is currently extremely expensive. In turn that will mean cheaper TVs for you and me. The two companies hope to see the screens in production in 2013, and TVs on sale by the end of 2013 or 2014. [Business Wire via The Verge]